


Finding Peace

by AlterImpulse



Series: Letters After The End [2]
Category: Xenogears
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, End of the World, Epistolary, Epistolary fiction, Letters, M/M, POV First Person, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Recovery, Relationship Discussions, Talking, characters working things out and dealing with issues, reference to suicide attempt, surviving the end of the world, talking some more, talking way too much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 06:40:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18424965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlterImpulse/pseuds/AlterImpulse
Summary: A sequel to “The Future Is Not Ours.” Another letter, from Citan to Elly.





	Finding Peace

Elly, I hope you and the others in Nisan are finding yourselves well, it has indeed been a very difficult time for those few of us left upon this world. One week, and it shall have been a year since we began the fight back to survive, a year and a half since the Gaetia Key did what I still fear as irreparable damage to us and to this planet.

My homestead is holding on, as I hope Nisan is as well. I have sent this letter and these provisions of my own with the young king Fatima, as he, Billy, and Sigurd have undertaken a journey to the place. Fruits and vegetables from my gardens, a live breeding bearcow pair with a newborn calf - oh, how I so love the taste of sweetened bearcow milk even if I once loathed it - necessary machinery and medicines, and… a special creation that shall likely provide full power for the generators at the underground once more. A fully charged Wave battery, a gift from Fei and Id, now that they have discovered their ability to channel the power to less destructive means.

As for the things you sent us, I am most deeply appreciative, and for the Special Herb Tea especially - although I still prefer my green tea, when I am not in dire need of a laxative.

Also, as you seem to have predicted, and as mentioned, Fei and Id have arrived here, and both have resumed painting. My old supplies were quickly running thin, so more for them to work with has been good. Painting is, I have realized, one of both Fei’s and Id’s best outlets for the emotions and memories neither can still handle in full. As is music - I managed to recreate the Shevatian wind chimes from my last surviving one, and we built an instrument from those chimes, upon which Id creates the most beautiful sounds. He is even teaching  _ me _ how to play it, and Fei is teaching Midori how to paint.

If it were not for their presence, and for Midori, you know that my heart would be absolutely broken. I cannot ever and will not ever forget Yui, she opened my eyes to a world to which I was blinded and gave me the strength to begin my own path, she gave me Midori in a process so much more difficult than a mere Solarian cloning process, and she took care of us all. I still feel deep guilt that I did not get him out of Shevat before he was triggered, and sometimes in my darkest moments I do blame him for her death, even if it was an unplanned accident.

That said, I do carry my own burden, and it was out of that guilt and fear that I did not ask before I set up the permissive action link on Xenogears itself, even if that link is what saved them and returned them to me. It almost broke our trust once more, when they realized I had installed it, enough to leave me in tears, unable to explain why.

Surprisingly enough, it was Bart who understood both my pain, and how it motivated my decision and how hurt they must have felt, and Fei’s and Id’s pain and sense of betrayal to be forced into life.

Were it not for Bart’s and Billy’s talking with each other and both of us, so we could all understand why we made the choices we did - myself to neglect Fei’s and Id’s own feelings out of fear of more death and destruction, Fei’s desire to kill himself if it killed Id, Id’s desire to let that blast kill  _ everything _ including themselves - and after we could understand the reasons we approached things and felt things in the ways we do… we are now closer than ever.

Although I do feel my own regret over that… I am finally allowing myself intimacy, vulnerability in full, to not simply protect, and not make my decisions based on logic and calculations alone. Something I buried for so much time, a part of myself of which Yui even only saw in dim reflection. That… I have found love once more, but that it took me this long to reach… what it is to not have secrets and not keep them to protect, when I was only protecting myself.

And in my own way - and I hope you do not feel offended at my speaking of such things, as I am well aware you may feel I have taken your love from you for myself - I understand your words that I once mocked. The night before last, we changed places and, to look up at him, to feel those feelings as our bodies joined, for the first time that I have fully surrendered control of my own will in many years… “I am in supreme bliss when I am embraced by the man that I love. Giving what I have to him, and receiving what he gives to me, we become one flesh... That is the moment when I am most at peace.” I… never thought that  _ I _ would be the one thinking those words, of  _ Id  _ at that, rather than running in fear or taking a defensive posture ready for the worst, but… somehow, I understand now. And for that, I offer my own apologies.

Nonetheless, we are surviving, and in some ways there are small signs of hope even I can see, despite being the pessimist I tended to be for so long. We are setting up more homesteads in Lahan now that the spring is beginning to arrive, each modeled after the schematics and blueprints I used to design this one.

Once we can make this place safe and sustainable on its own without my assistance, and we can begin stockpiling provisions once more, we plan for an expedition to Zeboim. If Emeralda can indeed recombine her nanomolecular DNA in those nanoreactors with several other lines from blood or saliva or hair from the rest of us, or we can find the Eldridge or its carrier ships or interplanetary communication equipment, and Fei and Id can give it enough power and I can understand its operations - then and only then, will I truly feel optimistic.

Even in writing, I seem to ramble, do I not? So I shall probably cut this off here, especially since I am working tonight to get the radio link between Nisan and my house here up and working, so that we no longer need to use letters carried by messengers and with shipments to communicate. It is my wish that by the time you are reading this, we are already speaking with each other!

P.S. I have also included a drawing from Midori with this letter. She wanted to say hi to her Aunt Elly too… yes, that is what she calls you. I guess she does not understand how blood relation works, or maybe… she understands that we are both from the same place and that is the word that comes to mind? I do not fully understand, although I have began to understand her more, now that I realize we share a gift of the mind, a way of our minds working, even if it resulted in different effects to the point of our intensely bothering each other at points.

P.P.S. Can you send a recipe book from there? I am trying to learn land cooking styles in a way that would make Fei, Id, Emeralda, and Midori enjoy my cooking, rather than think of ways to politely dispose of it for three of them, and rather than get it thrown at me by Id. Although Billy is considering opening a bar and cafe, from how much everyone asks him to cook rather than myself! I guess it is time to learn something other than my specialties, such as my favorite boiled fish casserole and snail pie. “It does not contain humans” is  _ not _ enough to make people enjoy my cooking in Etrenank style…

P.P.P.S. One other thing. I have included a set of instruments for measuring weather and climate conditions in the region as well as intercepting possible communications from other regions and even possibly nearby planets. This should help you and us alike, and you can operate them easily using what we were told in Solaris for monitoring battlefield conditions and communicating between Gears.

P.P.P.P.S. Rankar breeding season has unfortunately began again. I have discovered the presence of felines repels them, so if you have a problem with those dinosaurs as we do, I have also sent two kittens from the latest litter. If you do not have a problem with them, at least you shall have two cats.

On behalf of the Emperor… no, I do not sign letters that way anymore.

Your -friend-

Citan Uzuki

**Author's Note:**

> Real people don't shapeshift, and the great majority of people with DID or similar dissociative disorders are not violent like Fei's alter Id. Here's links for real, researched info. Don't get your info on dissociation and DID from Xenogears, okay? :)
> 
> https://themighty.com/2017/10/how-to-help-dissociative-episode/
> 
> https://themighty.com/2016/10/what-dissociation-feels-like/
> 
> https://themighty.com/2016/06/self-care-tips-for-dissociation/
> 
> https://www.nami.org/learn-more/mental-health-conditions/dissociative-disorders
> 
> https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/dissociative-disorders/symptoms-causes/syc-20355215
> 
> FINALLY:  
> It is a fictional story. Do not imitate or replicate any acts of violence, sex, or anything else depicted in this story.


End file.
